Augrabies 1st Training Week

This has been a great training week. I managed to run 61km’s in total, at an average pace of 5:46/km (10.4km/h). I ran moderate hills with a total accent of 1,452m for the week. This was my base training week so from now on things will become a little more intense.

On Friday afternoon I ran a comfortable 21km’s followed by a relaxed 14km run on Saturday.

The Augrabies Multi-Stage endurance race is now only 15 weeks away and tomorrow is the start of my endurance week. I will run about 65km’s for the week but with 8kg’s in my race pack. The idea would be to keep it slow around 70% (65-75%) of my base week pace. So my target is to average 7.28 km/h (min 6.76km/h – max 7.8km/h). This translates to an average pave of 8:14/km (8:53/km – 7:42/km).

I will be finalizing my race menu during this week and next week so that I can give it a try during the following week. The aim is to have all my kit, including food sorted with 8-weeks to go so that I can train within a realistic weight margin.

Thank you for visiting my blog, we reached 24,800 visits since January 2012 and am averaging around 114 visits per day, your interest is really appreciated.

Genis

Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon

I am privileged to be part of the Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon field for 2012. There are exactly 16 training weeks left to the start of the race and my race specific training started this afternoon with a relatively easy 6km run. Target distance for the week is 60km's.

The Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon is a multi-stage 250km self-sufficiency race ran in one of the three deserts on the African continent. The field is limited to 100 runners from across the globe and the race itself is listed as difficult on the International Extreme Events Calender. It has an average midday high of 32 degree Celsius for October / November with possible peaks as high as 45 degree Celsius. Nigh times are reasonable at around 8 to 10 degree Celsius.

In 2011 only 28 runners ran the race of which 25 completed the race. The overall male winner was Dirk Cloete in a time of 27:16:00 and the female winner was Maretha Combrinck who completed the race in 37:27:00. The last person over the finish-line completed the race in 67:35:00 which translates to an average speed of 3.57km/h. The average for the field is between 41:00:00 (6km/h) and 50:00:00 (4.8km/h) while the top 5 runners completed the race between 27:16:00 (8.8km/h) and 37:27:00 (6.4km/h).

Starting race pack weight is in the order of between 10 and 12kg’s for most runners, and as can be expected dehydration and blisters seems is amongst the most common problems experienced by all.

To date there are 35 confirmed runners for 2012, so to all my fellow runners good luck with the training.

Sources

http://www.saexplorer.co.za/south-africa/climate/concordia_(kalahari)_climate.asp

http://www.extrememarathons.com/augrabies/New%20index.htm